I laughed, putting my pink polka-dot napkin up to keep the cake in my teeth from showin'.

"I know we don't know each other real well," Buddy said, "but I'm happy to help you out any way I can before the baby gets here or after."

I could feel that heat rising on up through me again. Buddy's cheeks got a little pink, and I sure was hoping he was feeling that same thing.

He cleared his throat and said, "You know, you being Graham's cousin and me owing him so much."

Maybe it's 'cause I was still right young and all, and I didn't have the confidence I do now. But I couldn't decide right then if Buddy might be being sweet to me over more than just him feeling loyal to Graham.

"Buddy, you been nothing but nice to me through all this, and I think it's a fine person who would treat a girl so good for no reason. You're the kind of man my daddy woulda loved."

Thinking about my daddy like that made my head all woozy and my feet get to feeling numb and tingly. Ever since I been a youngen, when I get too scared or sad or worked up all my blood drains right outta my head and I like to keel over right there on the coffee table.

"I didn't know your daddy, but I knew Graham's real good. And if those two brothers were anything alike, your daddy was a damn fine man."

They were more alike than collards and kale. Stubborn and hardheaded and prouder than one of them old Confederate soldiers. When Graham's daddy started farming he begged my daddy to go into business with him. But Daddy wanted to make something of his own self. When the bank took back Daddy's garage and he was back to being just a mechanic again while Graham's daddy's farm got all busy and moneymaking, that's when it got bad between them brothers.

Graham's daddy begged my daddy to partner up with him on the farm. And my daddy quit talking to Graham's daddy. I remember him stomping around outside the trailer, stem of wheat just a-going in his mouth. "Son of a bitch thinks he's better than me now 'cause he's made all this money and I ain't. I'll show him."

When my uncle died of a heart attack right there in his own field it damn near killed my daddy. I don't have no business knowing why or how people get cancer. But I'd bet my last unemployment check that Daddy was so eat up with never making up with his big brother that it gave him the tumors. Holding in all that pain, keeping it bottled up like fizz in Pepsi, it'll eat you alive just like the cancer did.

That ain't the kinda thing you say at a baby shower to some cute cowboy that's got you dreaming of being thin again. But when Buddy looked at me sideways like, I knew I didn't have to say nothing for him to understand.

About that time, Marlene come back, smacking that gum, saying, "Sorry, I got caught up by the sweet potato ham biscuits."

Buddy, he patted my shoulder and said, "Just remember what I said," and walked away to get food his own self.

He like to have gotten down on one knee and asked me to marry him for how that hand felt. While a rainbow of Skittles with ponies jumping through it danced in my head, Marlene said, "So, Jo, I was thinking with you being pregnant and all that we should start a baby store."

I was still so lit up from talking to Buddy that I was right more patient than usual with Marlene. So I said, real sweet like, "Marlene, why don't we talk about this later."

It was her worst damn idea yet. We couldn't make hide nor hair of a bunch of numbers and, last time I checked, businesses had to have something we didn't have one damn bit of: money.

"I'm dating this new guy," Marlene said, "and he's gonna give us the first couple months' rent for free while we get on our feet."

Marlene's new man would be running around on her or smacking her up before I had time to even get to thinking on the idea of a store.

So like she ain't said nothing at all, I said, "Marlene, you think any man's ever gonna love me now that I'm gonna have a kid and everything?"

Crazy as she is, Marlene comes through every now and again with a little bit of wisdom. "Oh, honey," she said. "If he's as good a man as you deserve, he'll see that little baby as a bonus."

Khaki

EVERYONE ELSE'S BUSINESS

When I went off to college, practically every person in Kinston told me that I should rethink my interior design major. "If she wants to learn how to move furniture around, you just send Khaki on down to the shop," I remember one of my daddy's friends chuckling.

If you aren't from a small town, you might not know how everyone is all up in everyone else's business every minute of the day. So you have to have a thick skin. I loved design and persevered through the insults and snarky comments. But that small-town cynicism must have gotten in anyhow because I am one of the world's most skeptical people. I believe in Jesus, but that's about it. Ghosts: fake. Bigfoot: no way. The Loch Ness Monster: biggest crock of all. So going to see an herbalist whose "office" was a garage with a few braided throw rugs lying around, old floral bedsheets draped along the walls, and a ratty tan corduroy sofa that would have seemed more at home in your daddy's old dorm room didn't seem like an ace in the hole to me.

We drove way out into the country-I mean, Graham and I live in the country, but this was the country-to a 1900s farmhouse that needed painting a decade ago with a condemned house with fourteen rusted-out cars as a neighbor. I looked at Graham and said, "Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll take the knife."

He took my hand calmly and said, "Let's just try it. If you get freaked out, we'll leave. We have nothing to lose."

"Except our lives," I muttered under my breath. He rolled his eyes. But, I mean, really, he set himself up for that response, didn't he?

So, the garage wasn't Duke University's Integrative Medicine Center, but it was at least clean. And Esther reminded me of Pauline-if Pauline wore floral-print tribal garb and talked with a thick Trinidadian accent. Esther's warm smile, comforting Dove chocolate hands, and acknowledgment that "I know this isn't what you're used to, but give it time" softened me a touch.

She helped me up onto a massage table that was soft, warm, and comfortable. I figured that, worst case, I'd at least get to rest for an hour or so.

The soft, tinkling music, candlelight, and Esther's waves-crashing-to-the-shore accent did make me feel a bit like I'd been to the islands. She wanted to "read my feet" first thing. As soon as she raised the sheet to check them out, the strangest thing happened.

I rose up on my elbows, looked at Graham, then at Esther, and said, "Is it weird that I taste pickles? Am I having a stroke or something?"

Esther laughed, the beads in her hair tinkling and said, "I put dill oil on the point on your feet that leads to your mouth." She winked at me. "I wanted to show you that the points in the feet correspond to the organs of the body."

Graham smiled at me supportively, and I lowered back down as Esther continued the "foot treatment" that was definitely more deep tissue and less Swedish. "Less time at the computer," she instructed as she kneaded away at my big toe, my body writhing in pain.

So, yeah, I spent a lot of time at the computer, like every other person in the developed world. She moved on from that poor mangled toe and said, "Ah. I feel here that you had a lot of strep throat as a child. Many antibiotics can leave the door open for sickness."

She had her eyes closed as her fingers padded up and down the balls of my feet. "Your lungs weren't fully developed when you were born, and your breathing has been difficult ever since," she stated. "A thyme and honey syrup will help you when it's cold out."

I was starting to feel a bit like that time I went to the psychic with my sister. Graham cleared his throat and, when I looked at him, he made a face like he was impressed.

Esther opened her eyes and said, "Do you have pain in your thighs?"

"Yes!" Graham exclaimed.

I cut my eyes at him. Then I looked back at Esther. "Does that mean something's wrong?"

She nodded slowly and said, "Ah, yes. I feel some stagnation of the liver here."

That was all well and good, and I'm as into my health as the next person, but, honestly, I was here to get pregnant, plain and simple. If my liver was sad and my thyroid was slow, so be it. I wanted a baby. So, I said, "What does this have to do with my endometriosis?"

Then Esther said something that made so much sense I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it on my own.

"Ah, sweetness," she said. "In our mind and in our body, either we're sick or we're well."

Jodi

PREGNANT-GETTING HORMONES.

After you've picked corn, you got two hours to freeze, can, or pickle it before its sweet sugar gets right starchy. Khaki and me, we wore ourselves down to the quick that year putting away cans for the winter. It come fast, too. It don't matter what the temperature is or what the Farmer's Almanac say. When the corn turns good and brown, you can bet your best boots it's fall. And we wasn't wasting any a' that yellow goodness.

I craved that corn we canned like booze when I was carrying you. I weren't working, so I'd cook stews, sauces, and dips all day, and, before I even got it all cleaned up good, it'd be darn near dark outside.

I walked in Khaki's house that day, setting my sights on the pantry and that corn. But I didn't get real far 'fore my stomach right near turned over. "Oh, my Lord," I said out loud.

Alex ran through the foyer and said, "Momma's cooking some sticks and leaves."

I nodded. "She's cooking something unnatural, all right."

It was like she mixed cinnamon and mushrooms and burned the pot on up. But then I saw Pauline. Khaki, now she couldn't cook a lick. But Pauline, I'd dare say, mighta been the best cook in the county-'sides me, of course. I heard Khaki complaining right loud, "I can't imagine that this is right."

I held my nose. I ain't been sick this whole dern pregnancy. My time might be coming.

"What the woman say exactly, baby?" I heard Pauline ask.

Khaki stood right up on her tiptoes and peeked in over that witch's pot on the stove and said, "She said, 'Your body will tell you what's right. You make your own medicine.'" She put her hands on her hips. "What is that supposed to mean? I mean, honestly, just give me a piece of paper with some instructions on it, and I'll boil it up and drink the amount you tell me to. I can't go with the flow like this."

Pauline shrugged. "Maybe that's the point, baby."

Khaki lifted the ladle out of the pot, held it to Pauline, and said, "I mean, could you drink this?"

"I couldn't," I said, by way of lettin' 'em know I was standing there.

"Oh, thank God," Khaki exhaled. "Jodi, please come over here and rub some of your good, pregnant-getting hormones on me so I can stop all this nonsense."

I laughed and Pauline said, "I just never heard of no Trinidadian woman practicing Chinese medicine. Don't make no sense."

Khaki shook her head. "She doesn't only practice Chinese medicine. She does like everything. Indian medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, yoga therapy. She's studied all over the world. She's super brilliant." Khaki paused to hug me. "She felt like this herb concoction was what my body was telling her it needed."

"Your who said what?" I said.

Khaki shook her head. "I know. It's insane."

I looked over into that brew on the stove and saw all sorts of ungodly sticks and leaves and whatnot just floating around in there. "I think you got taken," I whispered. "That lady give you what the yard men didn't get off the street."

"That's what I thought," Khaki said, turning the stove on.

"What you doing, baby?" Pauline asked.

"My body feels like this slop needs to boil down more."

My ankles and hips got to groanin' and cracklin' as I climbed up onto the stool at the counter. "What is that godforsaken potion?" I asked. It mighta looked like yard clippings, but it smelled worse than a plastic pie pan meltin' in the oven.

"It's herbs."

"Herbs? Don't them things come in a pill or something?"

Khaki pointed at me like I hit the nail on the head and let her hand slap back on her skinny thigh. "Exactly."

Pauline laughed and leaned right on over beside me.

"Looks like that baby be coming any minute," she said.

I nodded. "I darn sure hope so. My feet and ankles get much bigger and they're gonna bust all over the kitchen."

Khaki made a face. "That's even grosser than this."

I felt my face getting right red, looked down at the white marble counter and then back up at Khaki. "I'm real sorry that I'm pregnant and you ain't. It kind of makes me feel like bragging, struttin' around here with my big belly."

"Don't be silly," Khaki said, waving her hand.

To be downright honest, it didn't feel all that bad. I ain't never had much to brag about, growing up like I did. I never had a new car or the fancy shoes or even the best backpack. So, to have something that somebody else wanted. Well, it was kinda like gettin' even in a way.

But a baby ain't the same kinda dream as a promotion at work or a string a' pearls all your own. It ain't the kinda thing you can just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dust off your overalls, and earn. If you ask me, it seems like a lotta the time the people who should have the youngens cain't get pregnant and the ones who don't have no business raising nobody pop 'em out like candy corn at Halloween.

"So what's up with the princess?" Khaki asked.

I smiled and said, "Well, I went to the doctor today, and he said that now that I'm thirty-seven weeks, I'm full term. She'll be comin' any time." I weren't scared when I said it. I knew childbirth was gonna hurt right fierce. But cain't nobody tell you what it's like to bring a baby home all alone, to be the only person responsible for another person's raisin'. All I knew was that my back was achin', my feet was swollen, I couldn't get near a good night's sleep, and I was as ready to pop as a chick pecking through an eggshell.

But now I know: There's being ready, and there's being ready. When you're nineteen, you don't know the damn difference.